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Long time readers will be shocked, but Albo’s finally done something right! His recent speech about all the wonderful opportunities of AI is a blow to all the AI-doomers and gloomers, like that angry luddite Ed Zitron. Many sensible commentators agree with AI-guru, Sam Altman, that we can build the infrastructure to make Australia the data centre capital of the world. US tech supremos Amazon are keen to invest. So, it makes absolute sense that we should embrace this opportunity to have them build a data centre here in Taree.
AI data centres are absolutely essential for our local economy. Sam Altman and other illustrious tech entrepreneurs have pointed out that AI jobs are the future of our economy, and the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has also pointed out that AI is predicted to boost productivity. Therefore, our future economy will all be based on AI jobs. And AI jobs need data centres, so it is an absolute no-brainer that we need to build one here. Furthermore, building our very own data centre here in Taree will likely cause massive economic growth because the US has the highest number of data centres in the world, and we've all heard from President Trump how amazingly the US economy is going (coincidence? I don’t think so, just look at this chart I made below below). Did you know that, according to recent figures released by ABS, Australia has spent $83.4 billion on the construction of AI data centres in the space of three months? Imagine what we could do for our community in Taree with $83.4 billion! That’s enough to build new schools and hospitals. Why would anyone be against that?
There is strong public support for the data centre in Taree. Look here, see for yourself, a recent YouGov poll of 2070 people shows that most are in favour of a home-grown data centre. And a local Facebook group set up to discuss the proposal has generated a lot of interest, with 5000 hits in the last week.
A repeated lie we’ve been hearing from the AI-doomers and gloomers is that we should ban data centres on environmental grounds but, as any reasonable person can plainly see, allthe environmental arguments against building our very own data centre here in Taree are flawed. Let’s spell it out for the slow ones at the back. Not only has Albo promised that all new AI data centres will be renewable and energy neutral, but even now the environmental impacts of data centres are much less than the AI-doomers claim. They don’t use all that much water: Water Services Australia has predicted that by 2035, only about 15-20% of Sydney’s water supply will be used by data centres. And the power requirements are not as bad as doomers suggest either. As the graph below clearly shows, even do-gooders at the Climate Council admit that climate pollution from Australia's major data centre operators such as NextDC and Equinix dropped between 2021 and 2024:
Furthermore, there are so many other things that are way worse for the environment than data centres, and we don’t ban them on environmental grounds. Did you know that data centres are better for the environment than having kids? Sam Altman has rightly pointed out that it takes a lot of energy to train a human. If we aren’t banning people having kids on supposed environmental grounds, what justification is there to ban data centres? Is that what the AI-doomers and gloomers want?! Banning kids, absurd.
Indeed, if anything, building an AI data centre here in Taree would be good for our local environment because AI is going to solve climate change. The World
Economic Forum have shown that we can use AI to track melting icebergs and map deforestation faster than ever before. And if AI can solve climate change, then surely it would be good for our local environment too. See, it’s all win-win when it comes to getting our very own AI data centre!
We also need to acknowledge that we live in scary geopolitical times. It’s clear that failing to build our own data centres would also leave us dangerously vulnerable, since if we don’t let Amazon and others build data centres right here in Australia, we’ll lose our data sovereignty (since all our data will be controlled overseas at the mercy of foreign powers), and losing our data sovereignty would make us vulnerable. Some of you might reasonably be wondering,
therefore, whether these doomers arguing against home-grown Aussie data centres are deliberately working to undermine our national security. What other explanation could there be for trying to leave Australia vulnerable and open to foreign enslavement? The truth is, we have to seize this opportunity now. People all over the world are already making this leap towards a high-tech future, so either we join in now when the going is good, or we will miss out forever on being part of the world’s digital future. And clearly, we can’t afford to miss out on being part of that future, since that would inexorably lead to the collapse of our beloved town. Is that what you want for your kids? Surely not.
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